$1.1m Lismore cycleway under construction

Angie Correct me if I have it wrong, but I understood the rail trail is projected to cost $75m for its 130kms- less than a million per km – not multi-million per kms. There is a feasibility study that shows the solid benefits of the spend and I have yet to see any serious objection to its findings. As such I do not know why the spend would be subject to ridicule. It is easy enough to imagine the money being spent on reintroducing the rail service; it is more difficult to imagine why anyone would want to re-establish a service that would cost so much in recurrent costs, let alone the restoration costs. Would it not seem ridiculous to do so when for less ongoing recurrent costs you could provide a comprehensive bus-based public transport to all the main areas of population, not just the minority along the rail line, including for disabled people, and particularly for the growing number of elderly along the Tweed and Ballina coasts. But you are correct that people should be able to connect to transport routes with cycle paths. A read of the NR Transport Plan shows the great majority of residents are a short drive or an easy cycle of the main transport routes, including along the Lismore – Byron Bay route, but also routes like Ballina – Lismore or Tweed Coast – Gold Coast that do not lie on the rail line, and carry even more people wanting to access health and education services and work opportunities. Now that could be a public transport system that all people can use!.

Comparing the rail trail and this type of infrastructure is like comparing apples and potatoes – they are two different things aimed primarily at different cyclists. On P16 of the Ballina cycling plan thee is a good outline of the different types of cyclists and their needs. The rail trail is aimed at recreational and touring cyclists, many from outside the region – it is a tourism spend. The proposed Lismore cycleways are aimed at transport. Both need to be publicly funded because it is difficult to recover cycle infrastructure the costs directly. The benefits of the rail trail flow to the users who may be from around Australia, and to the community by their $200 day spending. The benefits of commuter infrastructure like this are manifold and Angie is right to praise it. They include reduced public spending on car based infrastructure, reduced visual and air pollution, public and private health benefits, including the mental health benefits of reduced isolation of people who do not drive, private financial benefits in reduced transport costs, and the development of community and public safety that flows from having people on the streets. The costs of accessing the paths is as low as a second hand bike, preferably with gears in Lismore, so those benefits, Joe Monks, do not need to flow only to middle class people (as if middle class people are an elite in Australia). As is noted it will extend to Goonellabah, so in due course anyone who who lives there will be able to enjoy those benefits too. Plainly a transport spend like this has nothing to do with housing, but I will say that in that most middle class of cities, people like me who used Canberra’s cycle paths over the years, have saved our fellow ratepayers and ourselves a lot of money, and those private savings have helped make the high cost of housing in Canberra more affordable.